Microfluidics has entered the Life Sciences market as a key technology to provide solution to the market requirements in terms of analysis automation, reduced analysis cost by lowering sample volume and reagents used faster analysis. In 2014, the market of microfluidic devices will exceed $3 billion, according to Yole Développement.
Drug discovery remains the first microfluidics market, and will continue to grow significantly as well. This is particularly true for the technologies enabling multiplexing. However, the largest growth is expected in the field of Point of Care diagnostics.
Yole’s report includes market data for 2006‐2008 and market forecasts for 2009‐2014 for life sciences and in‐vitro‐diagnostic applications…A specific section is dedicated on the analysis of what happened over the last three years, which are key elements to understand the actual and future microfluidic market.
Microtechnologies or Microsystems technologies are considered today as a mainstream miniaturization and parallelization approaches for Life Science applications. Indeed, microsystems skills, associated materials and processes are often of great value to achieving new steps towards automation, portability, lower response time, parallel processing of samples (multiplexing).
Source: Yole Développement.Alliances, mergers and acquisitions allowed the organization of the microfluidic market
The microfluidics supply chain is now structured, in particular in Europe and USA where 70 percent of the active players in the field of microfluidics are companies, with the other 30 percent being university groups and Contract Research Organizations (CRO).
This market structuring goes together with a significant number of mergers and acquisitions. As one example, Siemens has acquired three major diagnostic companies, DPC, Bayer Diagnostics and Dade Behring and consequently has become one of the top three diagnostics companies. Amic, setup in 1998 as a microfluidics fab, refocused its business in 2003 and positioned itself as a diagnostics company, has been recently acquired by Johnson & Johnson to be integrated into Ortho‐Clinical Diagnostics.
The evolution of the microfluidics market over the last three years presents a regular growth. This quantification is based on the reported sales of the top 150 players worldwide. Yole Développement estimates that these top 150 companies, which include fabs, system manufacturers and diagnostics companies represent 90-95 percent of the total market.
Point of Care, the largest growth in the microfluidic industry: +37 percent CAGR between 2006 and 2009
Today, Point of Care represents 15 percent of the market, and has shown tremendous growth over the last two years: +37 percent CAGR between 2006 and 2009. Following this trend, its share of the microfluidics market for IVD applications is expected to exceed 30 percent by 2014.
Pharmaceutical research is also an area where microfluidics plays and will play a significant role. It includes however many types of applications and technologies such as genomics, proteomics, cell research.
Cell based assays, an opportunity of the microfluidic industry
One area of particular interest in pharmaceutical research is cell based assays. In order to reduce the time necessary to develop new products, drug manufacturers have begun to move away from traditional assays and pay greater attention to cell based assays for drug discovery. Cell‐based assays have a high potential to replace traditional assays because drug action on single cells and cellular activity can be measured and monitored with very high accuracy, in environments very closed to real living conditions.
Although this particular market is very small today, tremendous growth is expected in the coming years, anticipated to exceed 30 percent.
The microfluidic market is still changing today. For example, some products are moving from research applications to the clinical diagnostics and point of care fields. This trend is limited due to:
‐ The relative high manufacturing costs of many microfluidic devices.
‐ The fact that significant hurdles remain in the technology itself and its fusion into the healthcare system.
However, the microfluidic market organization really started and ensures now a profitable market for several key players. With 2009 EMMA release, Yole Développement provides to the players, keys to understanding the current and future microfluidics market. The company presents its analysis (key players, key products) and its data for the period 2009‐2014. Moreover this report contains a special chapter focused on analysis of the last three years.
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